The Famous McCartys Pottery That Comes from the Mississippi Delta

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app, the Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. McCarty’s Pottery was founded in nineteen fifty-four and is known all over the world today. And it all started in the tiny Mississippi Delta town of Marigold and still stands sixty-five years plus later. Here’s Stephen Smith, one of the godsons of Lee and Pup McCarty, who now runs the business with his brother.

You’ll hear me refer to Lee and Pup as Uncle and Aunt. Now, actually, my brother and I are not blood-related at all. We are related, as Uncle Lee would say, by love. The whole connection, if you will, starts in a very small-town sort of way, in the sense that friends of family become family over time. We probably all had that situation where you’re fourteen, you know, fifteen years old, and you think, ‘Well, exactly, how are we related to Aunt Susy?’ And your mother says, ‘Well, we’re not related at all.’ And you think, ‘Well, wait a minute! She’s been at every birthday party. She comes to Christmas! And you mean we’re not blood-related?’ And your mother says, ‘No, she’s just a very dear friend.’ So that was the same situation with us. Uncle Lee, of course, grew up in Marigold. He was born in nineteen twenty-three. Marigold is twenty-three miles from the river. We’re about two hundred miles south of Memphis. So Marigold is spelled with an E, not an A. We’re not named after the flower. We’re named after Colonel Frank Marigold came here in the eighteen seventies and started clearing the land. And then the railroad came in eighteen eighty-two. My great-grandfather was the depot agent and telegrapher for the railroad, and then the town was actually incorporated in nineteen O-eight. Now, at that time, the interior part of Balder County, Mississippi, which is where we are now, was nothing but swamp. Civilization was on what people in the Delta referred to as the riverside. The interior part of the county was all wilderness. Then gradually, as people moved into the interior part of the county, they started clearing the land, such as Colonel Marigold, and civilization began to come to the interior part of Balier County. And we had two county seats in Balder County because the officials wanted to make sure that people could get to the courthouse on horseback and then return home before dark on horseback. So that’s why we have two county seats. And the odd thing about the Mississippi Delta is that in the late eighteen hundreds, we were really entering the nineteenth century. The rest of the state was moving toward the twentieth century. When the town was incorporated in nineteen O-eight, the people were shocked to learn that there would be a town marshal. Now, they knew they were getting a mayor, but they did not know they were going to get a lawman that would tell them what to do. They didn’t like that. They were of the opinion that they didn’t need some lawmen telling them what to do, and if there was a problem, they would work it out amongst themselves. So again, very much that frontier mentality. Another great example of that is that the townspeople were resistant to the idea of a school. They did not want their children going to school. Their idea was that the children needed to work; they had land to clear, things to do, and they saw very little value in an education. But again, this is going back to that frontier mentality, and it goes to show you how we were entering again the nineteenth century when the rest of the state was progressing into the twentieth century. So Lee and Aunt Pup met at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. Uncle Lee then went off to World War Two and then returned. By that time, Aunt Pup had graduated. They married in nineteen forty-seven, and then Uncle and Aunt Pup went to Oxford, Mississippi, where Uncle Lee attended the University of Mississippi and received his B.A. in education. Then from there, they went to New York City, where he received his master’s in education at Columbia University, and then they returned to Ole Miss where Uncle Lee taught in the Demonstration School, which was a fully functioning high school attached to the university. While Aunt Pup was at Delta State, she had actually studied painting, but she was very interested in art, naturally, and she had never taken pottery. Now, at that time, Ole Miss was very small and Oxford very small as well. Everybody knew each other, and they knew the chancellor of the university, who was Chancellor J. D. Williams. And Aunt Pup asked J. D., as he was known, if she could take pottery class. And J. D. said, ‘Well, of course, Pup, you go on down and just tell the professor that I said it was okay.’ Great. Now again, Ole Miss, being very small at the time, that was sufficient. So she arrived early, and she told the professor that she was there to take the class to audit the class and that J. D. had said it was okay. ‘Well, naturally, that’s fine.’ So he said, ‘Well, just have a seat. We’ll wait for the rest of the class to ride.’ Pretty soon, a big fellow walked in, another big fellow, and then a whole bunch of big fellas walked in. And she realized pretty quickly she was taking pottery with the Ole Miss football team, and she was the only female in the class. So she went home that night and she said, ‘Lee, guess what?’ And he said, ‘What?’ And she said, ‘You are going to take pottery,’ and he did. That’s how they discovered their love and talent for pottery. So in some ways, a happened chance of life, but in other ways, we all have a purpose in life, and this was theirs, and they discovered it. So they had a little house at Two Ten South Lamar Street, which is there still today. There’s a little garage attached to the home, and that’s where they had their first studio. They had Uncle’s kick wheel in there, a small little kiln. But then, of course, they needed clay. Well, one day in class, Uncle Lee mentioned offhandedly that he needed clay, and a young lady raised her hand. And he said, ‘Yes?’ And she said, ‘Well, Mister Lee, if you need clay, why don’t you call Dad, and I’m sure you can go over to the house and get all the clay you want.’ And he said, ‘Okay.’ Well, the child was Jill Faulkner, the daughter of William Faulkner. And the house, of course, was Rowan Oak, which is still there today. And Uncle Lee would go and dig the clay that he needed at Rowan Oak, take it back to the house, wedge it, and then they would use that clay. So the very first pieces they made were from the clay at Rowan Oak.

And you’re listening to Stephen Smith tell the story of McCarty’s Pottery—well, how it started—one of the nation’s finest pottery makers right here in Mississippi. We broadcast from Oxford, Mississippi, home of Ole Miss, a beautiful town an hour south of Memphis. When we come back, more of the story of McCarty’s Pottery here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we’re bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we returned to Our American Stories and to the story of McCarty’s Pottery. When we last left off, we’d heard about the small town of Marigold, the Mississippi Delta town where this famous pottery comes from. Let’s continue with the story of the founders behind it, Lee and Pup McCarty. Here’s their godson, Stephen Smith.

A beautiful town.
Come and visit sometime. Let’s pick up now with the story of McCarty’s Pottery, as told by Stephen Smith.
So, open. The studio in fifty-four. Struggled in the nineteen-sixties. Like I said, they didn’t have a lot of the way of customers. And then in the nineteen-seventies, it really started to take off as people became accustomed to it and wanted it and started to come more often. And what’s been amazing over the years is how the art of Uncle and Aunt Pup has in some ways transcended art itself and become part of the culture of the state of Mississippi. This probably would have been around nineteen ninety-nine, two thousand. Right in there, a group of ladies walked in the studio, and it was pretty clear from the beginning that this was a family. This was the great-grandmother, the grandmother, the mom, and then the great-grandchild. And I talked to the ladies a bit, and they told me that they had come to the studio for the great-grandchild to pick out her first piece of McCarty’s. She was probably about six…